Austria 2004

 

The Forum against Antisemitism in Austria reported 122 antisemitic incidents in 2004, including the desecration of three Holocaust memorials. The crisis within the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) deepened as its electoral support continued to decline. As in previous years, the far right Zur Zeit was a forum for the expression of virulently antisemitic views.

 

the Jewish community

Austria has a Jewish population of 10,000 out of a total population of 8 million. Most registered members of the community are affiliated to the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien (Jewish Community Vienna). The present community, mostly located in Vienna, is made up of several groups, the most numerous being returnee Austrians and their families, as well as former refugees from Eastern Europe. A Jewish primary school and high school, as well as several Jewish publications such as the monthly Die Gemeinde and Aufbau and the quarterly David serve the needs of the community.

 

EXTREMIST ORGANIZATIONS AND Groups

The FPÖ and Associated Groups and Publications

The crisis within the right-wing Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) deepened in 2004 as its electoral support continued to decline. Since it became a member of the governing coalition (with the conservative ÖVP) in 2000 and shared responsibility for unpopular social measures, the conflict between the more pragmatic wing, which stresses the importance of loyalty to the coalition, and the extremist wing, has sharpened. In the past the authoritarian leadership of Jörg Haider had prevented an open break. Now, as governor of Carinthia Haider has been able to play off one against the other in order to strengthen his own position.

Heinz-Christian Strache, a former protégé of Haider, became FPÖ chairman of Vienna in 2004. His nationalist agitation against EU enlargement and “Brussels bureaucrats” threatened the FPÖ’s partnership in the coalition.

Andreas Mölzer exacerbated the FPÖ’s problems by attacking it in his extreme right-wing weekly Zur Zeit and by gaining a seat in the June 2004 elections to the European Parliament, outstripping the candidates of the FPÖ, which obtained only 6.3 percent of the vote (1999: 23.4 percent). He immediately declared that he would work from the Euro-Parliament to unify European extreme right parties.

In January Mölzer gave an interview to Deutsche Stimme, organ of Germany’s NPD, where he claimed that the Europeans understand “that they have to assert themselves against the hegemony of the US and the lobbies which control it.” This was proved by recent polls, he said, which showed that the majority of Europeans considered Israel a danger to world peace.

Ring Freiheitlicher Jugend (RFJ − FPÖ Youth), which has also become more radical, has joined forces with neo-Nazis, especially in Vienna and Carinthia. After the Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes (DÖW) revealed that the RFJ homepage contained neo-Nazi content, an anonymous message appeared on the RFJ Internet forum on 19 April, threatening: “The DÖW Jews should not become cheeky or else…”

In the RFJ paper Tangente (Feb. 04) the group’s chairman John Gudenus demanded that the EU act against “the mad aggressor, the US,” which had “long ago replaced international right by the right of torture.” He refers to Islamist and Palestinian terror as ‘resistance’. FPÖ student and youth groups view suicide bombers as ‘freedom fighters’.

 

Neo-Nazis and Skinheads

The biggest and most active neo-Nazi group is the Bund freier Jugend (BfJ), the youth group of Arbeitsgemeinschaft für demokratische Politik (AFP), which is particularly strong in Upper Austria. In January 2004 Upper Austrian extreme rightist Gerhoch Reisegger gave a lecture about his September 11 conspiracy theory to the BfJ. Reisegger was also among lecturers, such as Horst Mahler and Germar Rudolf, advertised for the “International Revisionist Conference” of neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers held in Sacramento, CA, in April (see USA).

In March BfJ held its secretive annual ‘Volkstreue Youth Day’, which attracted many neo-Nazis from Germany. The BfJ monthly Jugend Echo of May lamented the “end of the German Reich” and extolled National Socialism as a “fitting and Völkisch fashioned culture.” It added that their “great-grandfathers and grandfathers” fought in World War II for “the liberty of their people.”

Among lecturers who took part in the “39 Political Academy,” held by the AFP in October in Feldkirchen (Carinthia) were several neo-Nazis, including Herbert Schweiger, the eminence gris of the Austro-German neo-Nazi-scene, Claudiu Mihutiu, a leader of the Romanian Noua Dreapta (one of the militant successor groups of the wartime fascist Iron Guard), and Gordon Reinholz, chairman of the Märkischen Heimatschutzes (MHS), one of the German Freie Kameradschaften. Also present was Horst Mück, a leading activist of Sudetendeutscher Landsmannschaft in Österreich and manager of the Sudetendeutsches Dokumentationsarchiv in the Haus der Heimat, which is heavily subsidized by the Austrian government.

A skinhead group sealed off the meeting to the public. Nevertheless, after the Austrian Press Agency (APA) published themes from the ‘academy’, such as: “The enemy is and will also be the Jew” and “The eternal Jew should be eliminated,” the director of the Carinthian Office for Defense of the Constitution announced an investigation.

The AFP organ Wiener Beobachter (Dec. 2004) eulogized Yasir Arafat, claiming he represented a half century of struggle against “Zionist repression, expulsion and persecution.” The extreme right has adopted the conspiracy theory whereby Arafat was murdered by ‘Zionist agents’.

Of the numerous skinhead concerts organized by Blood & Honour, the biggest took place in Western Austria on 9 October in Bregenzerwald, with almost 500 neo-Nazis from Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Two German (Frontalkraft and Kommando Skin) and two US neo-Nazi bands (Youngblood and Extreme Hatred) appeared.

 

Arab/Muslim and Left-Wing Activity

In spring 2004 the official homepage of the Palestinian Community in Austria displayed a Stürmer-like cartoon showing three vultures representing Orthodox Jews. At the end of 2003 the organization posted a photomontage, showing US President George Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as apes, apparently a reference to a line in the Qur`an stating that Allah had transformed Jews into apes. The organization’s webmaster, Dr. George Nikola, revealed his conspiracy view of the world to the Vienna city weekly Falter (13/2004). According to Nicola the 9/11 attacks were planned by the US secret service in order to “damage Islam.” He also implied his support for the conspiracy theory prevailing in the Arab world and among neo-Nazis according to which Jews/Israelis were warned of the impending attacks.

His affinity for extreme right notions is demonstrated by his presence at their events in recent years. In February 2004 Nicola spoke on “Apartheid in Israel” at SOS Heimat, an initiative founded in 2001 by the extreme right Österreichischen Landsmannschaft and Zur Zeit. He also lectured at Club 3 and the Initiative Freiheitlicher Frauen (IFF), advertised in the extreme right Eckart.

The neo-Nazi website stoertebeker supported the protest of the Palestinian Community against naming a Vienna square after Theodor Herzl. George Nicola’s complaint to then president of the republic Thomas Klestil was published in its entirety by stoertebeker, which also advertised an anti-Israel demonstration in the center of Vienna on 26 June, organized among others by the pro-Islamist group Sedunia.

Extreme rightists, Islamists and Arab nationalists manipulate the anti-Zionist ultra-Oxthodox Jewish sect Naturei Karta for their own antisemitic/anti-Zionist/anti-Israel purposes. For example, the neo-Nazi site stoertebeker published in detail a speech made by Moshe A. Friedman, ‘chief rabbi’ of Neturei Karta in Austria, at an ‘anti-Zionist conference of rabbis’ held on 1 July 2004 and attended by prominent figures such as Martin Hohmann, member of the German parliament who was expelled from the CDU/CSU fraction because of an antisemitic speech, and former Austrian Foreign Minister Erwin Lanc (SPÖ). Friedman claimed the Zionists had not shrunk “from inciting and provoking pogroms in Russia,” had welcomed the Nuremberg laws and done everything possible to provoke antisemitism.

On 17 February the national Bolshevist Anti-imperialist Coordination (AIK) posted on its website the text “Yesterday in Italy, Today in Iraq, the Same Crimes, the Same Resistance,” which equated Nazi and fascist crimes with the war in Iraq and the anti-fascist resistance with Islamist terrorism. Leftist cooperation with ultra-right and Arab elements was criticized by the German left-wing group Neue Einheit (New Unity), which asked: “Should ultra right and Nazi slogans stay?” during preparations for an Iraq Solidarity Conference. It also questioned the theses presented in the paper of the Iraqi Patriotic Alliance, which spoke, inter alia, of a ‘Zionist-imperialist occupation’ and ‘Zionist occupation’ of Iraq.

 

antisemitic activity

According to the Ministry of the Interior, there were 17 (2003: 9) antisemitic acts in 2004, mostly propaganda and verbal offenses (threats), as well as vandalism of property (graffiti). The Austrian NGO Forum against Antisemitism reported 122 antisemitic incidents (2003: 134), including 110 threatening and insulting letters (2003: 158).

 

Violence and Vandalism

Three Holocaust memorials were vandalized. The concentration camp memorial in Hinterbrühl, near Vienna, was desecrated twice, in mid-January and in mid-June, when the words “Zion verecke!” (Zionist die miserably − Juda verecke was a Nazi slogan) were smeared on it. Engraved glass plates on the memorial in Villach, Carinthia, were broken twice, in mid-March and in early June. A memorial for 1,000 victims of Nazism in Klagenfut was vandalized in October.

Damage inflicted on the Jewish bookshop Chaj in Vienna at the end of December was suspected of being an antisemitic attack. The remembrance plaque to Theodor Herzl in central Vienna was destroyed in September and smeared with the word ‘Intifada’.

           

Propaganda

During the debate over a tough new animal protection law, unanimously passed by the Austrian parliament on 27 May 2004, some extreme rightists tried to ban the slaughtering method used by Jews and Muslims. The extreme rightist monthly Fakten (Feb. 04) attacked the “Constitutional Court which is more than conspicuously disposed toward multiculturalism” because it “prefers freedom of religion even where the customs of oriental religions severely offend the European justice system and sense of justice.” It linked “medieval, foreign ritual of animal sacrifice” to the medieval blood libel by claiming that “at the time of Muhammad some 400 nuns were slaughtered as a sacrifice to Allah.”

In regard to Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ, the extreme right bimonthly Die Umwelt (Jan./Feb. 04) claimed that powerful US Jews “from the East Coast” had incited “against the biblical picture” and that ”rabbis of the all-powerful Jewish community” had united with “left-liberal representatives of the Church… one world propagandists submissively dependent on Wall Street and preachers of multiculturalism,” finally revealing their “distorted face.”

On 19 May, the mainstream Graz daily Kleine Zeitung published a cartoon equating Israeli actions in the occupied territories with the Holocaust. Under the caption “Past,” there was a soldier with a swastika on his armband and a Jewish child in front of a ruin. Under the caption “Present” showing the same scene, the soldier was an Israeli and the boy a Palestinian. The Jewish Community and Action against Antisemitism protested the caricature. The editor responsible apologized.

In the January issue of Zur Zeit, Helmut Müller, editor-in-chief of the extreme right Eckart, expressed his resentment against Jewish victims of National Socialist racism. “I don't see… why human beings who received deeply inhuman treatment officially should today obtain a special status which promotes antisemitism.”

In Zur Zeit (38−39/2004), ‘EB’ deals with the Israeli businessman Haim Saban, “the new media mogul of Germany.” Since taking over the TV stations Pro7/Sat.1, Saban has become “the biggest manipulator of public opinion” in Germany. He ends his opinion piece with the Nazi call, “Deutschland erwache!” (Germany awake). DÖW submitted a complaint based on the law prohibiting Nazi activities. However, it was shelved by the Vienna state attorney.

Further, in Zur Zeit (44−45/2004) Catholic conservative Friedrich Romig saw a Jewish world conspiracy, which supposedly starts in the US, where the ‘influence’ and ‘control’ of the Jews “not only covers government policy but high finance, heavy industry, the armaments business and all cultural- and spiritual life, including science, the media and the entertainment industry.” Moreover, the war on terror has advanced “decisively the ‘new world order’ dominated by the Israeli-American connection.” Already “Christendom and the Roman Church… have given up resistance to judaization and globalization of the world.”

 

attitudes toward the holocaust

As of late 2003 the right-wing Catholic group Human Life International was operating on its premises a ‘Babycaust Museum’, also called ‘Baby Holocaust Memorial’. Like extreme rightists, these ‘right to lifers’ compare the Austrian abortion law to the Holocaust. Action against Antisemitism in Austria protested this abuse of the memory of Holocaust victims.

The US animal protection organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) ran a campaign in Austria equating animal crowding with the Holocaust. For example, it showed battery hens next to emaciated inmates of a concentration camp, with the caption: “Where it concerns animals, everyone becomes a Nazi.” Whereas in Germany the Central Council of Jews obtained an interim decree against the campaign “Holocaust on Your Plate” (see Germany), the anti-crowding campaign opened in Austria in late March. Action against Antisemitism in Austria protested and asked media and advertising firms not to publicize the campaign.

Salzburg neo-Nazi Friedrich Rebhandl continued to distort World War II history in Der Volkstreue, without legal intervention. In the February issue he repeated the myth of “world Jewry’s war declaration,” which had motivated the peace-loving Third Reich to persecute Jews. In March, he wrote of the “Christian-Jewish-American world order” and “human beings with crooked noses”. He accused Simon Wiesenthal of being “addicted to lies” and warned “that the hate he has sown in the whole world against Germany, could conjure up the risk of a vengeful rebound, probably only generations later.”

In February the website of the Belgium Vrij Historisch Onederzoek (VHO) posted two brochures of Viennese Holocaust denier Ernst Pitlik: “Mauthausen – Claims and Evidence” and “Auschwitz – Claims and Evidence.” Pitlik asserted that the “hitherto existing claims of witnesses (and perpetrators)” as to “the number of victims” and the “technical feasibility of the killing in gas chambers” could not be upheld. Further, “killing in ‘gas chambers’ with Zyklon B” was “technically impossible,” “a ‘propaganda lie’ of the Russians.” DÖW lodged a complaint to the Vienna state attorney on the grounds that Pitlik had violated the law against Nazi activities and Holocaust denial.

 

responses to antisemitism and racism

Twenty nine neo-Nazis, mainly young skinheads, were tried in 2004 under the Austrian NS-Prohibition Law.

Franz (Frank) Swoboda, operator of the neo-Nazi site Ostara, again succeeded in postponing his trial, which was scheduled for the end of April, on the grounds of poor health.

In June, Wilhelm Christian Anderle, 33, one of those deemed responsible for the desecration of the Jewish cemetery in Eisenstadt, Burgenland, in October 1992, was given a probationary prison sentence of four years. Anderle and his friends had smeared 88 tombstones with swastikas, SS signs and slogans such as “Sieg Heil,” and “Heil Haider.” A leaflet found at the site claimed that the “racist Socialist Aryan resistance movement” had carried out the act. After he was implicated in the investigation in 1996, Anderle fled to South Africa. He returned to Austria in 2003. Anderle had joined the FPÖ when he was 18 and was active in RFJ.

The preliminary inquiry against Lisbeth Grolitsch, chairwoman of the neo-Nazi Deutsche Kulturgemeinschaft (DKG), was terminated in April by the Graz state attorney. In a letter to DKG members Grolitsch had written about “wrestling with a lifelong enemy filled with hatred and despising people,” and claimed it was the generation of old National Socialists, “molded by the unique experience of the great rise and steep fall of the Reich,” who had had “the strength to stand up to a world enemy for more than half a century.”